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The Concourse of the Birds, from a Mantiq al-Tayr (Language of the Birds)

Habiballah of Sava, ca. 1600. Iran.

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Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A Persian manuscript painting of many birds, including a peacock, stork, rooster and hawk, gathered on a rocky slope under a gold sky, with a hunter at the right edge.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

In the Persian poem the Language of the Birds, by the twelfth-century poet Attar, the birds of the world gather to begin a long journey in search of a king. This painting shows that gathering. A peacock, a stork, a rooster, a hawk, ducks and many smaller birds crowd a rocky slope under a gold sky, around a stream and a flowering tree. Habiballah painted it for an older manuscript of the poem, about a century after the text was copied. At the right edge, half outside the frame, a hunter peeks in, the one figure who does not belong. The birds have not noticed him yet. They are busy listening.

Look closely

  1. How many different kinds of birds can you find?
  2. Find the hunter at the right-hand edge. What is he doing there?
  3. Look at the rocks. Do any of them seem to have faces?

While you sit

A great gathering before a journey. For now, nobody has left yet, and you can listen with the birds.

Your seat in the galleries: a woven rattan bench with a saffron cushion, like a nest lined in gold.

About the work

Title
The Concourse of the Birds, from a Mantiq al-Tayr (Language of the Birds)
Artist
Habiballah of Sava
Date
ca. 1600
From
Iran
Medium
Ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper
Size
Painting: H. 10 in. (25.4 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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